But Romney got lucky. His debate performance was so overwhelming that it has dominated the news despite the Big Bird comment. Nevertheless, it was a gaffe.

Yet Chait made the bigger mistake when he wrote: "Romney was able to take advantage of the fact that Obama has a record, and he does not. Obama has had to grapple with trade-offs, and Romney has not. So Romney is a candidate of a 20 percent cut in tax rates, a new plan to cover people with preexisting conditions, and higher defense spending, and he will accomplish it all by eliminating federal funding for PBS. He would not accept that his proposal would result in any trade-offs at all--no lower funding for education, no reductions in Medicare for anybody who is currently retired."

First off, Romney did deal with a trade-off. That was part of the reason his Big Bird remark was a gaffe: ("He's going to eliminate funding for Big Bird!")

Second, and more importantly, was Chait serious in criticizing Romney for not conceding that his proposals would require trade-offs? Politicians who acknowledge trade-offs are rare, because those that do are not likely to get elected. It's much easier to get elected by promising "free" goodies to voters and ignoring the costs of providing those goodies. Criticizing a politician for avoiding trade-offs is like criticizing mice for avoiding cats.

Third, the entire Obama Administration has been one grand exercise in avoiding trade-offs, and there is no greater example of that than ObamaCare. The Administration's defense of ObamaCare yielded numerous instances of this, but few were more vivid than Obama's red-pill/blue-pill remarks. "If the blue pill is half the price of the red pill but works just as well," the president said, "Why not pay half price?" In other words, we can cut health care costs and no one will receive inferior treatment. No trade-offs necessary.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to Chait. Perhaps he has spent extensive time talking about all of the trade-offs that Obama and others ignored when pressing ObamaCare. But a quick Google search doesn't reveal any. In fact, he seemed to be one of ObamaCare's biggest cheerleaders.

In which case, Chait's criticism of Romney for not acknowledging trade-offs isn't really fair. Rather, it's a partisan criticism and, thus, one that shouldn't be taken too seriously.